50 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



of the fourteen sedge-warblers cried " chissick," and 

 almost as many " tell tell " : in fact, he heard in 

 all thirty-four " tell tells " and thirty-one " chissicks." 

 This he told us in his " Evolution of Bird-Song." 



For my part, I doubt whether I ever heard of 

 sedge- warbler and I have listened to the bird 

 summer day after summer day whilst angling, and 

 sometimes on a dark June night, too which did not 

 utter the " pink," the " chissick," the " tell tell." If 

 ever we made the house sparrow rare in England, the 

 sedge-warblers in the river tangle would none the less 

 cry " tell tell," " pink," and " chissick." These sounds, 

 whatever their origin, are as much a part of his song 

 as the passage sounding like " swot, swot, swotty " is 

 of the nightingale's. Let the sparrow become as ex- 

 tinct as the auk the notes supposed to be his would 

 be safe in the keeping of the sedge-warbler. 



The thrush, though singing everywhere in April 

 days, is not yet at his height of song. For the set and 

 finished phrases, perfectly enunciated, we must wait 

 till May, even early June perhaps. The thrush is at 

 the prime with the year at the prime. It is as though 

 the days and long evenings, full of sap and scent, were 

 needed to inspire him to the utmost of his strength as 

 singer. But in April we can realise the range and 

 rank of the song thrush through the missel thrush. 

 On a chilly April evening, a still evening, the missel 

 thrush will settle on the top twig of a high oak for 

 twenty minutes or half-an-hour of earnest song. He 



